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The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

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Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#61

Post by PietdeVries »

0x445442 wrote: post #51
tombert wrote: post #6

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…

Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…

The thing is that this working-from-home people significantly impact the efficiency of your office. It's a trend (could be the open-office space started it) but resulted in people easily working 2 or more days from home. That implies that any desk you have is empty about 40% of the time. Or: your entire office is not being used for 40%...

So when bosses realised they were throwing money away, they came up with the open office with flex-desks: no-one has a fixed place, you can sit whereever you want. And there are less desks than people.

That can work out quite well (I work in such an office) but it depends greatly on ehtics or rules: no TVs with soccer games, no speaker-phone (but only headset) and rooms available for discussions or phone calls. And there is a general area (quite large) where you can drink your coffee and discuss the soccer matches or Tour de France results...

For me it works, but I can imagine that without the requirements listed above it can be a cumbersome workenvironment.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#62

Post by southerndrift »

>None of this is new. There’s been an endless stream of studies showing that the open-plan office is a source of stress, conflict, and turnover. And yet it’s still the default in tech. An almost unquestioned default. That’s a fucking travesty.

No, it's the other way round: you create conflict and turnover by introducing an open-plan office. That way, your codebase remains maintainable since handovers happen regularly.

Imagine the opposite: a productive coder from a silent office leaves after 30 years. There is a very high probability that it takes months until new recruits can make meaningful changes since nothing has been documented. If you enforce regular handovers you can be sure that some documentation has accumulated somewhere.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#64

Post by [deleted] »

tombert wrote: post #6

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…

[deleted]

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#65

Post by BoysenberryPi »

0x445442 wrote: post #51
tombert wrote: post #6

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…

Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…

I slack and email co-workers who are within spitting distance of me. More often than not they are busy and I don't want to interrupt their flow with something that does not require immediate attention. So I'll shoot a Slack or email their way and let them get to it when they get to it.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#67

Post by wafflesraccoon »

Man, reading the comments makes me think I'm the only one who loves open offices. After switching from a cube I never want to go back. I found being locked in a cube all day was depressing and created a culture of working zombies. With an open office in my experience people seem much happier.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#68

Post by Waterluvian »

0x445442 wrote: post #51
tombert wrote: post #6

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…

Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…

I agree. But I like slack more than talking because I get time to think and a transcript after. Probably yet another reason I love working from my home office.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#69

Post by vfc1 »

I used to stay later and use the hours from 17h onwards where there was more peace to get productive work done, as it was impossible during the day with all the interruptions and standups (plus headphones all day non-stop).

Only 1.5h hours lost hours a day? Try 3h or so at least LOL

Working from home, it feels like time is elastic at least the first few times, then you get used to it. You start working, get what it feels like half a day of work done and look at the clock: it's still 11 AM.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#70

Post by stult »

falcolas wrote: post #54
tomtheelder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work. This probably depends where you are. An open office plan might well let you use less than half of the square footage per employee, which in somewhere like Manhattan would potentially be saving you on the order of $5-10k per employee. Depending on how significant the productivity…

$5-10k saved yearly to produce an unproductive $150,000+ employee... I don't think the scales are balanced even then. And, from personal experience, companies do it even when the cost per square foot is 1/10th of that of NY.

Yeah, I'm on my phone so I can't do a full break even on this easily, but here's my rough estimate. If you're losing 1.5 hours of productive work per day, five days per week, and employees are otherwise productive 30 hours per week for 50 weeks out of the year, that's 375 hours per year out of a 1500 hour work year. That means for a $10k per employee rent savings, you lose more in wasted wages for anyone making over $40k per year. Even if we double the estimated productive hours per year, it still doesn't make sense for anyone making $100k or more.
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